St. Paul police Sgt. Tom Bergren retiring after 32 years on the force

There's a sign on Sgt. Tom Bergren's desk in the St. Paul police homicide unit that says, "Never, never, never give up."

The mother of a man killed in a triple homicide in the North End in 2007 gave it to Bergren, the lead investigator on the case, a year or two after the execution-style shootings and before anyone had been arrested.

For those who know Bergren, they say the phrase sums up his approach to all cases and especially the triple murder, which concluded last year with two people convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison.

When Bergren retires on Friday, March 23, it will be five years to the day since the killings of Maria McLay, 32; McLay's daughter, Brittany Kekedakis, 15; and McLay's fiance, Otahl "TC" Saunders, 31.

Bergren said the triple-homicide anniversary was not the only reason he picked that date, but it figured into his decision. "I thought it would be a fitting time to bring a close to my career," he said.

"I can tell you that Bergie, as we affectionately know him as...was a link to the family," St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith said last week when he presented awards to Bergren and others who worked on the difficult case. "He never gave up....And he also made sure to instill that attitude" in everyone who worked on the case.

Beth Hill, Saunders' mother and the woman who gave Bergren the sign, said she believes the detective "was as horrified by what happened to our family as we were."

"I could tell he cared," she said.

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"I could see it in his eyes, I could hear it in his voice. He committed to us, he told me he'll do everything he could to solve this crime, and he did."

A BUDDING COP

Bergren grew up in Circle Pines but spent time as a child in St. Paul - both sets of grandparents lived in the city, on the West Side and off Rice Street. His mother's uncle was West St. Paul's public safety director, and Bergren said he remembers seeing him in a squad car.

All of Bergren's grandparents listened to police scanners, "so when I would stay over there I'd be up all night listening to the police calls. It was exciting. I always liked being up at night." He recalls being 8 to 10 years old and the drama of hearing the calls.

"The excitement of it is what I really liked throughout my whole career," Bergren said. "When I was younger, certainly, I wanted to be in on all the hot calls, all the action."

Bergren started police work in 1976, when he was 19 years old, as a reserve officer in Circle Pines' and Lexington's then-combined police department. "I put in literally thousands of volunteer hours," he said. He soon became a community-service officer and was hired as a full-time officer in January 1979.

St. Paul police Sgt. Tom Bergren wipes away a tear after a letter a victim's relative wrote about him was read during an awards ceremony in St. Paul, Minn., on Thursday, March 15, 2012.
(Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Even when he was a community-service officer, Bergren said, he would finish his paid shift and work an additional six or eight hours as a reserve officer. Working sometimes 16 hours a day was "kind of like working in homicide," he said with a chuckle.

In October 1979, Bergren started at the St. Paul police academy. Two other officers from his class remain on the St. Paul force; Bergren is currently sixth in seniority in the department of about 600 officers.

Bergren spent time as a patrol officer, a K-9 officer and an investigator in the auto theft unit.

THE HOMICIDE UNIT

Bergren became a homicide investigator in 2004.

"The work that we do here is unlike any other assignment because your life is really tied up in it," he said. "You might not be home for two or three days when you're investigating a homicide. It's a big commitment."

For those days, investigators keep changes of clothes at the police department, shower there and might catch an hour or two of sleep on a cot, Bergren said.

"It gets harder - the older you get - to recover," said Bergren, who turned 55 this month.

Many officers in Minnesota start looking at retirement in their early 50s; in St. Paul, officers must retire by age 65.

Bergren's work in the homicide unit wasn't limited to murders - investigators there also handle assaults, kidnappings and robberies.

Bergren's former boss in the homicide unit, retired Senior Cmdr. Tim Lynch, called him "doggedly determined and relentless," describing him as one of the best investigators he's met.

"He got along with people, even suspects, and he got a lot of confessions out of people that maybe other investigators wouldn't have had luck with," Lynch said. "He had such a disarming and humble manner about him, a lot of people would talk to him."

The Burgess Avenue triple homicide was the biggest case of Bergren's career for several reasons. There was the nature of the crimes and the fact they involved children: Saunders was tortured during the home invasion robbery and McLay's other children, then 7 and 10, were forced to lie next to their mother and teenage sister as they were shot. They feared they would be next.

John Harrington, who was police chief when the triple homicide occurred and is now a state senator, said, "As much as I took the case personally, I think Bergie took it even more personally. This was an atrocity that wasn't just work for him, it wasn't just another case or investigation to be solved. The cold-bloodedness of it offended everyone's sensibilities."

Then, there were the suspects, who had violent criminal backgrounds. At the time of their trial, Rashad Raleigh and Tyvarus Lindsey were already serving state prison sentences for other, unrelated murders.

Many people put long hours into the case, and Lynch said Bergren "really carried" it.

"It was one of these that dragged on and on because it was so hard to get evidence," he said. "The suspects were so dangerous, everyone was afraid to talk."

Bergren kept another memento on his desk from the case: a collector's plate that features a warrior. It was a gift from Lynnette Hartling, McLay's mother and Kekedakis' grandmother.

When Hartling gave Bergren the plate, before any arrests had been made in the case, she told the detective that it meant something special.

"To me, he was our warrior. He was our warrior for our children," she said last week.

THE COLD CASES

There are some unsolved cases that still haunt Bergren.

"For no apparent reason, I'll be working in the garden or fishing and they'll just pop into my head and I'll think, 'What about this or what about that?' "

Some in the category were the homicides of Denelle Bacon; Eric Woulard; and Diana Smith and her fiance, Douglas Jones.

Bergren has kept a photograph of Bacon on the bulletin board on his desk. The 17-year-old was found fatally shot March 4, 2004, in a wooded, dead-end section of Point Douglas Road near U.S. 61 and Pig's Eye Lake.

Police believe Bacon was abducted from North Minneapolis and that someone gave the killers incorrect information about Bacon's involvement in stealing their property.

No one has been charged in the case.

Woulard, 21, was shot to death June 16, 2007, as he sat in a van near a friend's house in the 600 block of Van Buren Avenue.

A friend of Woulard's was arrested but released without being charged.

Smith, 23, and Jones, 29, were found dead March 11, 1981, in Jones' Minnehaha Avenue apartment. Initially, how the couple were killed was a mystery, but it was later determined they had been poisoned by chloroform.

In 2005, police announced they had sent some of the evidence for a new round of tests, including DNA typing, and nothing came of it, Bergren said. A former boyfriend of Smith's is a suspect but has never been arrested.

People coming forward with information is often what solves homicides, Bergren said.

"We're not Sherlock Holmes, and one of the reasons that I think St. Paul has always been successful and had a high clearance rate in homicides is because we have a good relationship with the citizens of this city," he said. "With that comes phone calls and information because people don't want this on their chest if they know some information about a homicide."

Bergren has been passing along information about unsolved homicides to Sgt. Jake Peterson since he joined the unit a year and a half ago, so the younger officer can continue working on the cases. Bergren brought Peterson to the crime scenes of older cases, walking him through them and talking about angles for Peterson to pursue.

"He's been an incredible mentor," Peterson said. "In our line of work, sometimes it's hard to find positive and uplifting people, but he stays optimistic and he doesn't forget cases even 20 or 30 years old."

Bergren said he doesn't have immediate plans for retirement, other than taking his father to Washington, D.C., to visit the Smithsonian Institution's museums. The 81-year-old elder Bergren loves museums and hasn't been to the nation's capital.

Bergren also plans on traveling with his wife, Cheryl, and two adult children.

Sgt. Tom Bergren, a St. Paul homicide investigator, heads toward the Ramsey County courthouse for a hearing. After 32 years as a police officer, Bergren is about to retire. (Pioneer Press: Ginger Pinson)